CyberStein

About the Book

Bored and cold in 1816, which was known as ¡§The Year without a Summer¡¨, Percy & Mary Shelly were on chilly holiday with their good friend the poet Byron. Remanded to the indoors, huddling around the fire, they challenged each other to write the scariest ghost story to pass the time. Mary Shelly composed based impart upon the Prometheus legend where in the hero steals Zeus¡¦s fire from the center of the Sun. Now this is a big deal. The acquisition of fire allowed for the development of weapons and tools. Elevated and separated the human from the animals and maybe just a step closer to the gods. Well naturally Zeus gets pretty pissed. Punishes Prometheus by chaining him to a rock in the Caucasus. Every night he is visited by an eagle that ate his liver. (which of course grew back every day) Meanwhile Mary Shelly¡¦s take on all this turned out to be in the form of a strange tale about science run amuck with a mad doctor experimenting with the re-animation of dead bodies invested with life into a flesh and body living, breathing fiend. Sacred the living shit out of everybody in the movies as Boris Karloff lurched across the screen as a menacing nightmare fiend. And now some 200 years later all our advanced technology has generated a contemporary edition. Here comes CyberStein. In the late 1920¡¦s the first modern economic re-adjustment occurred with the crash of stock market based upon wild financial speculation that investors erected a mile house deck of cards made of stock ticker tape and when the inevitable happened with a house of cards at least they had a deck of cards to pick up. But now we have CyberStein. And we aren¡¦t leaving so much as ¡§nano¡¨ crumbs to find our way back. This time the collapse will be complete sending society back to the 19th century or maybe the time of the ¡§new¡¨ Greek Legends. All depends on how big CyberStein is this time and how far we fall with him. So take your pick just what system we have stolen our fire to create: Infer-structure de Jour: satellites, weapon systems, power plants, global sanity. So go ahead you tell me about science fiction or Greek mythology or why all this matters and where CyberStein will show up next in a maybe not so ¡§mini-ice-age¡¨ to eat all our livers„mwhich I guess will, presumably, grow back during the day.

Vincent Quatroche¡¦s latest collection of Poetry/Prose and Short Stories takes another look at both the ramifications and implications of the Prometheus legend and an emerging contemporary mutation of Mary Shelly¡¦ dark vision of a menacing creation brought to life by science and technology.

Primarily metaphorical in content and form, Quatroche¡¦s voice evokes the individual fragmentize and offers narratives reflection upon the emergence of a new experimental byproduct of our technological age; Cyberstein; an entity neither dead nor alive in a human sense of the reality, but a lurking like ¡§a ghost in the machine¡¨ force to reckoned with transforming the human beings experience in life with society, personal life, relationships and perhaps ultimately with fate itself. One thing is fairly certain there is no humanity to be found in Cyberstein. No remorse to be expected from this force. We are witnessing the birth of Prometheus¡¦ fire gone mad.

About the Author

Vincent Quatroche Sr. pictured above circa 1947 was a vibrant, productive artist working in a number of mediums and styles. From abstract, cubist, pop-art (both in oils and tempera), to more traditional, conservative techniques and subjects, Quatroche employed a highly individualist style that evolved continually during his lifetime. His early influences were variations on the themes of Pollack and Picasso. As his creative production which numbered in hundreds of canvases, sketches and notebooks spanned over half a century, Vincent consistently challenged himself to grow and express his talents with a variety of subject matter. His great love of the history of trains from steam to diesel figured prominently. Still life, landscapes of the sea, landscapes and portraits were also constant themes rendered in pen, ink and watercolors. In his latter years he returned to the impressionist treatment of another of his lifelong loves, Jazz and the great musicians who were giants in this art form. He continued to work up to within weeks of his demise at the age of 89 on Easter Sunday 2011. This book of short stories is dedicated to my father, who was my first teacher, mentor and friend and through his love, support and encouragement inspired me to find my own voice in creativity and expression.